NEWS: Understanding Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency

POLITICS: Understanding Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency

By now you should have heard about the rather groundbreaking Supreme Court opinion delivered this past Monday in Massachusetts v. EPA. As you probably know, it was a major blow to the Bush Administration’s “Environmental” “Policy” (quotation marks intentional) in that it actually forced the Environmental Protection Agency to uhh… protect the environment and stuff. How novel! But to understand what the opinion actually means from a practical standpoint takes a bit more background information on the posture of the case, the players and administrative law in general.



The EPA is an independent regulatory agency. Independent agencies operate as a subset of one of the branches of government but are specifically delegated powers that are traditionally separated into the other three branches of government. In the EPA’s case, it is part of the executive branch (which means the President gets to pick the person who runs it) and it has two jobs: making rules regarding environmental policy and making judgments as to whether those rules are being followed. All of the rules and judgments, or rulemakings and adjudications in administrative law lingo, MUST be based on the statute that created the agency (or any other statutes that the agency was created to enforce) or else they will be struck down.



Since day one, the Bush administration has been no fan of the environmentalist movement. This general distaste of all things green led the administration to staff the Environmental Protection Agency with folks who had no interest in actually doing stuff to help the environment. Now, when an outside group thinks that an administrative agency isn’t doing its job right, they can petition the agency to create a rule. Paul E. Gutermann, managing partner of the Energy, Land Use and Environment practice at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP, explains then how this case got to the Supes:

Everyone still with me? The EPA had basically said, “Yeah, yeah, there’s this Clean Air Act, and greenhouse gases are in the air and endangering the world and stuff, but we’re pretty sure that’s not what the Act meant so we’re just not going to do shit about it. Also, even if we wanted to, we should leave that to Congress (never mind the fact that Congress created us precisely to do stuff like this.) Have a nice day.”



As you can imagine, that didn’t go over very well. The original petitioners, now joined by 12 plaintiff states, filed for a review of the EPA’s rulemaking decision. Upon reaching the Court, petitioners must first get over a Constitutional hurdle that every person who sues anyone has to establish before he or she can be heard in federal court. That hurdle is known as the standing doctrine, which requires: 1) that a plaintiff needs to show that they have been injured, 2) that there is a link between the defendant’s action and that injury, and 3) that the injury can be cured by a win in this suit. Failure on any one of these three requirements and your case is history.



The plaintiffs in this suit had an uphill battle on at least two of the three. After all if you’re Massachusetts, how do you show that global warming is going to hurt your state specifically? It’s not an easy argument to make. Yet it is here that the meat of the case really lies. The Court’s opinion, which was written by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by Justices Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer and (habitual swing-voter) Kennedy, had this to say on the subject of whether Massachusetts could show tangible injury:

So the state was injured by a loss in the property value of coastal land as a result of the change in sea levels. The Court said this about the causation requirement:

Having established an injury and a causal link to that injury, the court quickly disposed of the EPA’s argument that the problem was too big for it to be redressable by the EPA.

Now that standing was established, the actual decision on the merits of the case was pretty plainly obvious: Yes, greenhouse gasses count as air pollutants within the meaning of the CAA despite the EPA’s argument that they don’t.

The Court had to tell the EPA that “any pollutant” actually meant “any pollutant.” And you wonder why people hate bureaucrats. Then the Court slam-dunked the agency's bullshit alternative argument: that even if they did have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, it would be a bad idea to do so at this time. No, I’m not making this up.



There were of course the predictable dissents by the predictable dissenters, with Chief Justice Roberts arguing that the plaintiffs lacked standing and throwing around rhetoric about the activist judiciary actively adjudicating. Justice Scalia (a former Administrative Law professor) also pressed for deference to the administrative rulemaking process. That's all well and good, but what does the ruling and its resultant precedent actually mean?



On some level it’s going to be impossible to say right away. As with any legal decision, it may take decades to truly understand its ramifications. However, a few things are clear right away. One is that it opens up the standings requirements for individual states (though not necessarily private parties) to sue federal agencies for enforcement of regulatory statutes. Another consequence is that environmental global warming watchdog groups now not only have the overwhelming majority of scientific consensus on their side, but Supreme Court precedent as well. Finally, it serves as another reminder to the President that the other two branches of government are sometimes willing to do their job even when he isn’t.

god damn, i love my state.

I cannot speak for all people, but as for this person...I hate bureaucrats.

thanks for posting this!
it's hard for me to find time to keep up with SCOTUS admidst all my obligations w/r/t naked chicks.

now we just need to figure out a way to keep justices souter, ginsberg and breyer alive FOREVER. (i'm looking at YOU, keith richards!)

bu·reau·crat /ˈbyʊərəˌkræt/
-noun
1. an official of a bureaucracy.
2. an official who works by fixed routine without exercising intelligent judgment


Damn it. I think I've reached the point of my life where I qualify. Does that mean I hate myself?

-D

Yeah, really. If we lose one of these justices in the next year and a half or so, we're pretty much fucked.

So, here's what I find personally so cool about this, outside of the total "save the environment" bonus:

1. I'm really intrigued by intergovernmental relationships - and I think too often we assume that the feds are just bossing around the states. Cases like this are interesting b/c the states are actually forcing the feds to do all kinds of stuff that benefit them (and can even be read as a *cost* to the federal government). In fact, I'm pretty sure that this happens more often than we think (and I'm betting my career that I'm right ).

2. I dig that part of Massachusetts's complaint is the loss of its territory to its sea. Land is one of the few *truly* irreplaceable natural resource out there. Again, I think it dictates a lot more political action than it gets credit for, and this case totally proves everything in my dissertation 110% correct.

On one hand, the EPA makes me want to bash my head against a wall repeatedly. On the other hand, the fact that the EPA is so totally fucking useless/ineffective is one of the reasons many of my friends and I have jobs. Dilemma.

So long as there are regulatory agencies dealing with the environment, you and your hippie friends will have jobs. Whether or not they're doing their job, there is always gonna be a need for folks who make sure they're doing it.

Whoah, Culture Editor? Nice job 'Brosa. Good article as well. Imagine actually forcing the administration to do the job they are supposed to be doing. I'm gonna go look for a 4 leaf clover in my yard, it's just that type of week it seems.